Long Long long couple of weeks

so you would think that with as many races have been going on the last couple of weeks I would be a bloggin fool (since I only blog after a race) but in honesty I have been too tired. so here is a quick update.

Deer Valley National
Everything at DV seemed to go well, we lined up as the first group to go off on sunday morning so it was nice to have a lead moto and dustless dh to rip. it was hodge pog field as it always is at nationals Kenny came up and Josh wolfe sandbagged to try and get some stars and stripes glory, the PC ssers showed up and a bunch of other randoms, then the typical fast nationals guys.

so the start went well I purposely held back so as not to to go too far in to the pain cave on the first lil stick climb. Josh and some factory sho air dude went off the front then the trek factory guy (georgia goulds husband I found out later) then me. so then we nt over the top and I chased but the trek guy had a minute on me after the first lap and it stayed that way for most of the race. we had 3 laps so it felt good. Paul clark was the first expert to catch me at the end of the 2nd lap which he then proceeded to get a flat. so then I continued to push hard into the third lap to see if i could close the gap and I knew kenny was hurtin by then so I wanted to put some distance between he and I. I ended up finishing 4th which was fine I guess. If I had finished one more spot higher I would have been stoked because I felt great and strong but made another stupid mistake tactically at the begining and let them get too far out. one interesting thing was that if I had raced in my age group with Ryan I would have placed 3rd only 25 secs behind 2 and a minute behind the leader. so that tells how tough the single speed group really is. I stand by my claim that it is the 2nd most competitive group after the Pro men (maybe 3rd if you include the semi pros) but we were the fastest racers out there in the expert groups.

12hr Endurance
So then a short 5 days later was the 12hr undurance which Ryan and I were racing as a Duo. I haven't done an endurance race in like 8 years, since I last did the 24hrs of moab. so I was a little bit nervouse. I was mostly worried about the heat, it was going to be in the mid 90s up there. but we made sure we were prepared and really focusing on drinking and eating early in the race. My plan was to ride the SS for the first few laps then as I fatigued I was going to race my Rush. I volunteered to be the first guy out so I got to do the run which was really long and uphill. I was second after the run and first by the time we went throught the pits, it turns out that Sly fox is no good at running in his road shoes. from the very start it was Ryan and I's team, Sly fox and Zep, Chris Holley and his wife and the guys from Idaho. from the first lap us 4 walked away from the rest of the field, I knew that it was going to be a drag race for most the day. I backed off on the last lap because I was going into the red stickin with Sly. The hand off went clean Ryan laid down a wicked fast lap and put every other team outa the way and it was just sly's team and us. IT stayed that way for about 6 or 7 laps sly extend ed the lead to about 5 mins. then the guys from Tamarack came charging back we held them off for about 2 laps then Blaney got a flat and they passed us, but all that time we were all relatively close. thats when the proverbial shit hit the fan. Ryan began puking and couldn't put any thing back. I was sup er nauseus and couldn't eat or drink anything between laps. we faded off of the leaders and began our survival mode. I am not going to lie the afternoon hurt really really bad. then things went frombad to worse, ryan completly bonked on his 6th lap and we lost more time so i decided to get on the Rush and go back to back laps so we could stay in the top 3. i made it abou 15 mins ou t on the 13th lap and broke my frame around the bottom bracket, that was it i was officially beat down. so i walked in the next 7 miles watched two more duos pass me, gave most my water to brad pilling because he was worse off then me. i finished right at 7 pm the last lap took me 1 hr and 45 mins. we ended up 5th. congrats to sly and ZEp they through down some blazin laps.
much thanks go out to all that helped us but especially the wives, Heather and Carli, without them out there helping us we would have never made it.

so now I am in rest mode I am probably not going to race Solitude, as much as I would like to woop Ali and Sly around I just don't think it would be good for me physicvally my body needs the Rest.

I will post some pics later, sorry for the novel like posts